A Honduran immigration detainee, his feet shackled and shoes laceless as a security precaution, boards a deportation flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Feb. 28, 2013, in Mesa, Ariz. GETTY IMAGES

Recently, even some Democrats revealed pity for John Boehner, the Ohio Republican with the demanding job as Speaker of the House in the 113th Congress. Perhaps Boehner's talents for management are underappreciated.

On Tuesday, he convened one of his "open mic nights" so his 234 members could have their say. Boehner's apparent hope is that by venting against President Barack Obama, his own crew could get the hostility out of their systems and return to the task of governing.

The specific issue this past week was the long and complex immigration legislation recently passed by the Senate. Although House Republicans consider it a monstrosity, the 2012 debacle known as the Mitt Romney presidential campaign has taught Republicans that they can't recoil from such legislation without causing Hispanic voters to look sideways at them. If they didn't get this lesson on their own, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has reminded them.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., put it this way in an interview with Al Hunt of Bloomberg News: "I do think Marco Rubio is right that when a voting group doesn't think you like them, they're not going to listen to anything else you have to say."

But what, exactly, do House Republicans want to do about the Senate-passed legislation that seeks to provide an eventual path to citizenship for about the estimated 11 million pilgrims living in this country, most of them Latino, who reside here, work here and pay taxes here without benefit of legal papers? That's the question of the year for the Republican Party.

The House Republicans' rap session was closed to the press, but afterward several of them talked to reporters and their concern seems to be that the Democrats' bill will mint more than 10 million new citizens without doing anything to stem continued illegal immigration.

Their fear is that decade from now another 10 million undocumented immigrants will be in the pipeline. That is why Republican demand strong "border security."

It's not a frivolous worry. It's happened before. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, granting amnesty to 3 million people. Despite assurance to the contrary, the law not only did nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration – it made coming here more attractive.

Democrats insist the border security provisions in their new legislation have closed loopholes. This is doubtful. Even Republicans who want to believe it have little faith the Obama administration would enforce them. And the president's blithe retreat on implementing the health care mandate doesn't instill much confidence.

"This administration has waived the employer mandate on its most important piece of legislation ... and it has waived vast sections of existing immigration law," Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a Boehner ally, said last week. "If you're a Republican, why in the world would you trust them?"

Fair enough, but mistrust of Democrats' intentions, while entirely rational, does not constitute a policy position. The Republican Party is split on immigration, torn between the most restive segments of its almost all-white base and its own history. But it seems that some prominent GOP banner-bearers are unfamiliar with that history.

This week featured a trial balloon by Sarah Palin regarding an Alaska Senate seat now held by a Democrat Mark Begich. But Palin didn't leave it there. She also expressed dissatisfaction with the GOP and ruminated about running on a third-party ticket.

"If the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and of Reagan, then yeah, more and more of us are gonna start saying, 'You know, what's wrong with being an independent?'" she said.

The problem here is that when Palin is pressed for specifics about her beef with the current Republican Party, opposition to immigration reform is front and center. She's not alone.

"If we did not learn anything from 1986, if we didn't learn anything from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, that big pieces of legislation shoved through in a hurry are dangerous, they are dangerous for people," Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., said this week.

This is revisionism, plain and simple. Love it or hate it, Obamacare was not cobbled together hurriedly. And the 1986 immigration law was one of the most debated and discussed pieces of legislation in Reagan's presidency. Its predictable failures came because Democrats and Republicans refused to include the measures that would have really sealed ours borders.

As for amnesty, that's the part of the law Reagan most liked.

"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and have lived here even though sometime back they may have entered illegally," Reagan said while debating Walter Mondale in 1984. And after he won reelection in a landslide, Reagan made good on this promise.

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